Melancholia
by krook
Summary: "We are not together and we have not been for a long time."


**AN: This is a stream of consciousness of sorts, written from Hermione's point of view, centered around a past relationship with Draco Malfoy. It's short. If you manage to get through it, leave a review?**

Your arrogance is ridiculous.

No you aren't perfect!

(Close though)

I hate what we've lost.

I look at you in the mornings, and your cheeks are a little fuller, your eyes a little darker. Sleepiness maybe.

It makes me reminisce and I think of how you would look at night. Paler than usual in the blue darkness. How your eyes would go tiny when you smiled. And you would laugh, and for a moment it felt as if you were releasing a piece of your soul into the open air.

(and taking a piece of mine right out of me)

I think you thought yourself above those intimate, binding words that everybody uses. Words like 'always', or 'love', or 'forever'. God, but sometimes I felt like I saw them in your eyes. In moments where your gaze was boring into mine and your eyes had this glint of some unmentionable feeling and your lips (don't even get me started) were so slightly parted and it was just maddening.

In my thoughts, I used to use those words all the time. I certainly felt them.

When you got too surly, I'd call you on it and we'd argue. Your pride, my pride, warring relentlessly, fantastically.

It normally ended with one of us laughing, and then the other would laugh too. And you'd pull me close to you, and we'd end up sitting on a couch, or on the carpet, among piles of our books (many). You'd run your thin fingers down my shoulders. Or you'd be sitting still with your lips resting on my head. We sat like that often. Or, so many times, you read to me. Biographies, poetry, love stories (you always scoffed and laughed a little when i requested the love stories, but one particularly cold day in November, you had just read a wonderful excerpt from Tess of the D'Urbervilles and you put your cool forehead against mine when you were done, and you said, 'These stories aren't all that awful,'), you'd read me everything we both loved. It's hard to imagine you ever having a prejudice against Muggle literature.

There was one night, I don't remember when it was, but we were at that tiny coffee place. The one that closed two months ago. (Were you affected by that by the way? I wondered.)

And you had brought my copy of The Complete Works of Drea. And I don't remember what you were reading but I remember being so happily lost in the smell of coffee and cinnamon and you (always intoxicating) and listening to the faint music playing in the coffeehouse, listening to you as you read verses of the ancient witch's work, the quiet certainty in your recital, and the soft baritone of your voice coursed through my every vessel.

I miss you so much.

We are not together and we have not been for a long time. Such a long time.

But there are these looks, you see, these unhinging looks and expressions and moments, and I can't decide whether they chill me, or fill me with warmth.

The light in the translucent gray of your eyes. The corners of your mouth pulling in the beginnings of a smile.

Every single day I see you.

Being so close unnerves me like nothing else. Physically taxing. And in my head, I am begging begging _begging_you to stop looking at me the way you are.

Yesterday, I was in a meeting with the Department Heads and you walked by and I stared at the door so long that Lancaster had to ask me if I needed a drink, or a mince pie or something, and that I was looking light-headed.

I heard some girls talking about you yesterday, in the bathroom. They were saying how good-looking you are and it was so sad because they can't even begin to grasp it. I would've said something; explained to them how little they saw of you, but really, how could I? You were not mine. And if you had ever been, it was a thing long forgotten, faded into oblivion. And it was certainly nothing anyone had been told about. Not your parents, not Pansy, and not those girls.

_"I'm yours." Your face was so close to mine, I could breathe you in. Your words were brimming over with emotion and feeling and meaning. I registered how perfect they sounded. I'm yours. I was. I said it over and over again._

_I'm yours. I'm yours. I'm yours._

Have you forgotten? Everything? Do you miss me, ever?

I would have read to you too, but I would always start laughing, or I would misread lines, and you would put an arm around my waist and pull me closer to you, laughing at me. So, it was always you who read. And you would never stumble over words; it was as if they were written just to be read by you. The poetry was composed so you would recite it in the voice that I would know anywhere.

**Thanks for reading! This story is for A.S.**


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